Popular Culture Review Volume 29, Number 2, Summer 2018 | Page 149

Popular Culture Review 29.2
Los Angeles County ( US Census Bureau “ Quickfacts : Los Angeles County , California ”). Each year for the past decade or so , this population has slowly decreased as more people are leaving Los Angeles , New York City , and other metropolitan areas to return to cities and areas within the South . Greg Toppo and Paul Overberg traced some of these migration trends in their 2015 article “ After nearly 100 years , Great Migration begins reversal ” and noted that Los Angeles was one of the major metropolitan cities that has been affected ( Toppo and Overberg “ After nearly 100 years , Great Migration begins reversal ”). Aaron Renn from the Los Angeles Times followed up in 2016 to say that such out-migration trends for blacks and African Americans are clear as “ West Coast progressive enclaves are either seeing an exodus of blacks or are failing to attract them ” ( Renn “ Op-Ed Why has there been an exodus of black residents from West Coast liberal hubs ?”).
Within Orange County , blacks and African Americans made up only 2.1 percent or roughly 66,000 people within the larger population of 3,169,776 in 2015 ( U . S . Census Bureau “ Quickfacts : Orange County , California ”). These numbers grew only marginally from the 2010 census , where they comprised only 1.5 percent of Orange County ’ s population . Theresa Walker from the OC Register noted that traditionally , African Americans as a group rarely surpassed 2 percent of the population , likely because of the high rates of conservatism behind the so-called “ Orange Curtain ” where some have termed Orange County as “ the Mississippi of the West ” ( Walker “ O . C . has a growing ethnic population with one exception : African Americans ”).
In addition to supporting and connecting with local gospel groups and African American communities , educational and informational components were added in 2014 to Celebrate Gospel with a walk-through exhibit that highlights the his-
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